Sarah Michelle Gellar (born April 14, 1977, in New York City) is an American actress and producer whose career has moved between daytime television, teen-oriented cinema, horror, comedy, and genre television. She began working professionally as a child after being discovered by a talent agent at the age of four. Early appearances included television commercials, stage work, and guest roles in series such as Guiding Light and Spenser: For Hire. Her first major television role came with the syndicated teen drama Swans Crossing in 1992.
Gellar gained wider attention as Kendall Hart on the ABC soap opera All My Children. She played the rebellious daughter of Erica Kane from 1993 to 1995, bringing unusual intensity and physicality to a daytime role. Her performance earned her a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Younger Actress in a Drama Series. Leaving the soap opera helped her move toward prime-time television and feature films, where she soon became associated with a new generation of young performers reshaping the horror and thriller genres.
Her breakthrough in film came in 1997 with appearances in I Know What You Did Last Summer and Scream 2. Both films were major commercial successes and established Gellar as a prominent figure in the late 1990s revival of teen horror. That same year, she began her defining role as Buffy Summers in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The series ran for seven seasons, first on The WB and later on UPN, and developed from a high-concept horror comedy into an ambitious drama about adolescence, responsibility, friendship, grief, and identity.
As Buffy, Gellar combined comic timing with action skills and emotional range. The role made her an international star and earned her a Saturn Award, as well as a Golden Globe nomination. More importantly, Buffy Summers became one of television's most influential female protagonists: physically powerful but psychologically vulnerable, and able to carry both large-scale supernatural stories and intimate character drama. Gellar's performance was central to the show's lasting reputation and to the broader acceptance of genre storytelling on mainstream television.
During and after Buffy, Gellar pursued varied film work. She played the calculating Kathryn Merteuil in Cruel Intentions (1999), a performance that demonstrated her ability to play darker and more sophisticated characters. She also starred in the romantic comedy Simply Irresistible (1999), appeared as Daphne Blake in Scooby-Doo (2002) and Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004), and led the supernatural horror film The Grudge (2004). Voice performances in projects such as Small Soldiers, Happily N'Ever After, and TMNT further broadened her screen work.
Later television roles included the dual lead in the thriller series Ringer (2011-2012), a part in the ensemble comedy The Crazy Ones (2013-2014), and appearances in the series The Big Bang Theory and Wolf Pack. She also took on producing responsibilities, reflecting a growing interest in shaping projects as well as performing in them. In Dexter: Original Sin (2024-2025), she played Tanya Martin, a senior figure in the Miami Metro Police Department.
Gellar returned to horror-comedy with Ready or Not 2: Here I Come in 2026 and joined the voice cast of the animated series Breaking Bear. Although a planned Buffy follow-up was not produced, her continuing work in horror and genre entertainment shows how strongly her career remains connected to the screen traditions that first made her famous.